Over a number of months, Guild members have been engaging closely with the idea of collaborative research missions. We wanted to see what these might involve, how they could resolve some of our most pressing scientific problems, and whether we could capture these in ways that translated their urgency to the public.

As the UK’s journey towards Brexit has reached the halfway point, the Guild is not the first network to state the importance of the free and easy movement of staff and students, and collaboration in research; nor should we be the last.

With this quotation Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, appealed to university leaders at the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit in London to confront the rise of populism with courage and integrity.

The High-Level Group chaired by Pascal Lamy was charged with crafting a vision for the EU’s next Framework Programme focusing on ‘excellence, openness and impact, and how to maximise their impact’ (Annex 1). This slightly awkward formulation suggests three interdependent (and compatible) priorities for EU-funded research and innovation, but the primacy of one: impact. This raises a fundamental question: are openness and impact always compatible with excellence—and what happens when they are not?

‘Lab-Fab-App’ – the Lamy Report’s title is peculiarly out of sync with its main message: the critical importance of research and innovation for the future of Europe. And a title that will do little to endear it to social media users ‘in the hood’ shows at a glance that bringing science closer to the citizen is not as easy as it appears.